Eleven pages of the online magazine are handed over to discussions about starting forest fires in NATO countries, providing both a tactical and religious justification for it, and an illustrated step-by-step guide on how to do it using a device made out of gasoline and a washing machine timer.

“Fire is one of the soldiers of Allah,” it says....

The idea gained traction in 2008, during Australia’s wildfire emergency. In 2009, a Department of Homeland Security bulletin noted “growing interest in ‘forest jihad’ among terrorists” but found no credible evidence it was a genuine threat to the U.S. “Considering the appeals posted in al-Qaeda forums, the possibility exists for arson to be used as a terrorist tool,” it allowed.

When we last left the genius who apparently thought that what al Qaeda's global death cult needed most was to embark on a print media enterprise, he was ... well, he was dead, actually. Samir Khan, the "Saudi-born, New York-raised" propagandist behind Inspire, the Lapham's Quarterly for bomb-mad terrorist weirdos, had been killed in one of those fun extrajudicial drone strikes that have become all the rage. Prior to that, Khan and his editorial team had commemorated the 9/11 attacks in "sour grapes" fashion.

Anyone looking for evidence that al Qaeda had been organizationally degraded in the decade since 9/11 would have found it in abundance in the pages of any issue of Inspire. Its debut issue urged young jihadis to "make a bomb in the kitchen of [their] mom" -- a sort of menacing version of the advice Alton Brown dishes out on the Food Network. Another issue featured a story suggesting that a good way to strike fear in the hearts of infidels would be to trick out your pickup truck to make it "the ultimate mowing machine," and terrorize sidewalk pedestrians.

Basically, these are the sort of convoluted, outlandish plans for villainy and mayhem that South Park's Professor Chaos would have deemed to be clownish.

But the administration has forged ahead, spending at least $2.7 billion since oral arguments in the case ended on March 28. That’s more than double the amount that was handed out in the three-month period leading up to the arguments, according to a POLITICO review of funding announcements from the Department of Health and Human Services.

While much — if not all — of this funding was in the pipeline well before March, the timeline for handing out specific funds is not set in stone, which gives the agency leeway over the kinds of dollars it has been handing out.

And the stakes have increased as the date of a Supreme Court ruling approaches, because money that is spent won’t have to be repaid, most likely. But remaining funds will dry up if the court strikes down the law.

The court is expected to announce its decision next week.

The $2.7 billion includes grants and awards that have been handed out since the Supreme Court arguments — including more than $90 million in funds for health insurance cooperatives that HHS announced Friday afternoon.

By contrast, the administration gave out about $1 billion in grants, loans and other awards during the three months before the Supreme Court arguments.

With floor votes planned in three days, Brown officials and lawmakers are still filling out major details of cuts to welfare-to-work and health care for low-income children that will determine exactly how the budget will impact programs.

Why was Barack Obama so popular globally when he ran for the US presidency four years ago? Because people believed that an eloquent and charismatic first (half-) black president of the United States could do good in the world. The retro-chic poster with a picture of Mr Obama and the single word “HOPE” on it conveyed the entire message.

Four years on, Mr Obama remains eloquent, charismatic and (obviously) 50-per-cent black. He still has considerable global prestige, but his career exhibits a contradiction which, over time, tells against him. He has used that prestige to tell us, in effect, that the president of the United States cannot do all that much good in the world. His message is that American power has lessened, that America is not a special place.

In logic, if you accept this message, you must place less hope in the man who delivers it. He is the advocate of his nation’s decline, and therefore of the reduction of his power. The odd decision to give Mr Obama the Nobel Peace Prize at the start rather than the finish of his presidency turns out to make a sort of sense: he achieved much more by winning the election than by anything that he has done.

...Mr Romney stands in the central tradition of the modern presidency. He thinks America should be strong. He sees decline as a choice to be rejected, rather than a fate to be embraced. He does not suffer from Jimmy Carter-type agonies about American power, and is not troubled by Obama-style, anti-Western “Dreams from my Father”. He is better qualified than Obama to recover the American economic leadership without which nothing much else can happen. He wants to build up defences again and shore up old alliances. The more he asserts these simple, important things, the more he will raise the question which ought to be asked of Mr Obama, as of all other incumbent Western leaders at this dire time – where the hell are you taking us?

“As you know, we’re having another speaker and there is some Secret Service involved. So there’s a reason why there’s no knives at your table and the forks will be collected. ... And I’m not joking,” Regalado told the audience in a ballroom at Disney’s Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World. “So, like the good Hispanic mother I’m here to tell you to please, eat your lunch.”

The main budget bill was passed out of the legislature last Friday in compliance with Prop 25 so that legislators will still receive their paychecks. But the budget is not actually solved yet, with many trailer bills still needing to be passed before the Governor can sign the budget.... Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said this week that he plans to send the rest of the budget to Governor Brown by June 30th. Basically what Steinberg and legislative Democrats plan to do to balance the budget is use fund shifting and one time gimmicks to cover the remaining deficit. Just like last year and the year before that and the year before that and so on. Where is a budget we can be proud of?

California Democrats Out of Touch

It is time that California voters wake up and realize that their representatives are largely out of touch. This week journalist George Skelton (of the VERY liberal L.A. Times) wrote a column highlighting the lack of urgency from legislative Democrats on REAL pension reform. Effective pension reform would help balance our state budget for years to come, but Democrats refuse to acknowledge the real problems that face our state. Click ◼ HERE to read Mr. Skelton’s column. Another basic blunder of Democrats in office is their lack of confidence in California and our citizens. Assembly Speaker John Perez said in a press conference that there is no point in training California’s unemployed workers if there are no jobs to be had. Why the lack of faith in California’s economy and California’s employable workforce? Watch this video ◼ HERE and see for yourself.

Prop 29 Officially Fails!

Almost three weeks after the primary we can finally say that Prop 29, the cigarette tax increase, has officially failed! The CFRW opposed Prop 29 because we did not want another unchecked, power-hungry state board to be created as the proposition would have done. It is apparent that Californians do not approve of tax increases, as they have voted down the last 8 tax increase propositions on our ballots. This does not look good for Governor Brown’s tax increase on the November ballot. But it is good news for California Taxpayers! Thank you for educating voters leading up to the election on Prop 29. We will need intense voter outreach and education as November gets closer!

Republican Women Unite!

If you know of a California Republican Women running for office, we want to know! Please email our CFRW Advocate at advocate@cfrw.org the name of the candidate, the office they are running for, their local RWF club and their campaign website if applicable. Thank you and let’s work together to WIN in NOVEMBER!

RNC Convention in Tampa, FL!

If you are a delegate, alternate delegate, or just attending the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida and you would like to share a room with other California Republican Women attending, please email our CFRW Advocate at advocate@cfrw.org so that we can all connect. Thanks!

President's Message
Dear CFRW Members:

Now is the time to begin really focusing on membership and getting women involved in the Federation. We have the best candidate running for President and many will want to be part of his rise to the White House. When a woman comes into volunteer invite her to join the Federation. One way to get our cause out is for all of us to purchase "a baseball mitt", either new or from a second hand store and paint 2012 on it. Put the mitts in the back window of your car. This will be the most subtle of all bumper stickers ever.

Mark down October 19-21, 2012 on your calendars as we begin putting together the largest "Boots on the Road Pep Rally" to be held in Fresno. More to follow each week in our Capital Update. We are going to have the biggest rally to excite for the "Super Bowl, World Series" on November 6, 2012 this state has ever seen.

ONE TEAM, ONE PURPOSE ONE GOAL: "MITT ROMNEY PRESIDENT"
Carol Hadley, CFRW President

President Obama personally inserted himself into the Fast & Furious gun walking scandal after he extended executive privilege over certain DOJ documentation. Was the Fast & Furious a botched scandal, or a deliberate effort to undermine the Second Amendment? Find out as Bill Whittle explores the ideological motives behind the Fast & Furious scandal.

Today’s presidency lacks the regal air of George III. But imperialism is back, in a big way.

...We can now see before us a persistent pattern of disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision-making without—and often in spite of—congressional action. This violates the spirit—and potentially the letter—of the Constitution’s separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President. Examples abound: at the link.

A little digging has revealed that this isn't the first time CNN has obliged Ms. Hidalgo. In fact, a few months ago, she was not just a student in the crowd at an event.... A little more digging reveals Hidaglo describes herself on her Twitter profile as an "Immigrant rights organizer," and she is called here a DREAM Act activist. In fact, Ms. Hidalgo, whom CNN referred to in January as a "college student" in fear of deportation – and then yesterday as a "college student" who confronted Gov. Romney – actually works for a Washington DC lobbyist.

After being asked if Romney might have suspected she was ambushing him, she told Political Pulse that she works for DRM Capitol Group, a Washington-based lobbying group that appears to exist specifically to push for the DREAM Act, according to the group’s website. In fact, DRM’s website statement about Romney includes this sentence: “Undocumented youth will escalate our actions against Mitt Romney until he supports the President’s new immigration policy.”

CNN got duped into covering this woman, multiple times; or else they knew very well that she was an activist and purposely hid the fact to paint her as "just a college student" in fear of Gov. Romney's policies. Either way, CNN has some explaining to do. More at Breitbart

Less than half of the 209 conference attendees said they felt hopeful about the president at 46 percent, while 35 percent expressed dissatisfaction with him and a further 31 percent were concerned about his performance. Only 11 percent said they were enthusiastic about Obama.

Then-state senator Obama had backed a bipartisan bill called the Safe Neighborhoods Act. It would have raised the crime of illegal transport of a firearm from a misdemeanor to a felony. But on the crucial day of the vote, Obama was out of town--and on vacation, in Hawaii. The bill failed by only three votes, and the media pounced--as did Obama’s rivals. It was the moment, Obama later said, when he knew he would lose the race.

...Obama and Holder, united in their dislike of guns, are now bound even more tightly by Fast and Furious. But Obama always had a motive beyond anti-gun ideology: the desire to erase his first defeat. His abuse of executive privilege will not prevent his second.

... In summary, Operation Wide Receiver was a small-scale botched sting operation, in which a foolish, but faintly plausible, plan to track straw gun buyers to their criminal customers went terribly wrong. The Obama Administration used this disaster as a template, radically increased its scale, and turned it into something else altogether.

Far from letting the Obama Administration “off the hook” because “Bush did it too,” an understanding of the full Operation Wide Receiver story makes the Obama scandal worse. Read the rest.

"With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations [of immigrants brought here illegally as children] through executive order, that's just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed."

-- President Obama, March 28, 2011

WASHINGTON -- Those laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama last week suspended these very deportations -- granting infinitely renewable "deferred action" with attendant work permits -- thereby unilaterally rewriting the law. And doing precisely what he himself admits he is barred from doing.

Obama had tried to change the law. In late 2010, he asked Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants. Congress refused.

When subsequently pressed by Hispanic groups to simply implement the law by executive action, Obama explained that it would be illegal. "Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. ... But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written."

That was then. Now he's gone and done it anyway. It's obvious why. The election approaches and his margin is slipping. He needs a big Hispanic vote and this is the perfect pander. After all, who will call him on it? A supine press? Congressional Democrats?

Mr. Friedman has studied the Koran for over 40 yrs. He is a Vietnam Veteran who has worked for the US Defense Department and has worked undercover with the FBI for over 20 yrs. He's been a regular on the Brian Sussman Show. Don’t miss this important presentation. ◼ Learn more at: islamthreat.com

Many felt that President Obama upstaged the Florida senator with the Friday announcement, because it was understood that Rubio was working on his own version of the DREAM Act. Conservatives, especially, asked why Rubio took so long in crafting his own legislation.

"That’s why it took so long to come up with the bill. If I wanted to come up with something based on talking points, I would have done it in six months. I just think if you look at it, this White House didn’t reach out to anyone. [Obama] never talked to anyone. It’s not that I want to talk to these guys. If you are really interested in a bipartisan solution, you reached out to senators from other parties. That never happened. They’re interested in a talking point. I hoped for a humanitarian solution.”

“If Georgia Democrats can’t hawk a $500 reception with the President of the United States, they’re in worse shape than we knew,” a prominent Georgia Republican operative told the Tipsheet. “Guess their admission last month that the campaign would not pursue Georgia really depressed what little donor base remained here.”

In spite of the president’s reputation as an unparalleled fundraiser, his campaign has been losing in recent weeks the competitive edge to Republican Mitt Romney in the cash dash.

Financial disclosures for the two pols revealed Romney had outstripped Obama in May by nearly $17 million.

There aren’t Greek columns tall or wide enough to camouflage Barack Obama’s impending North Carolina catastrophe. In September, the campaigner-in-chief will travel to Charlotte for his party’s presidential nominating convention. For once, the incurable jetsetter may wish he had stayed home.

Obama’s stage managers envision a triumphant, unifying coronation reminiscent of their 2008 DNC production in Denver. But the southern swing state is turning into a Democratic disaster zone.

Start with the North Carolina Democratic Party. At the state party convention last week, Obama for America was AWOL. The glaring absence of high-level national Obama surrogates was noted “as odd,” according to the Charlotte News and Observer. There’s good reason to steer clear. The party is embroiled in a sordid sex scandal that won’t go away. More at the link

The Los Angeles Times does not fully report this out, but Brown’s decision not to bypass CEQA essentially kills California’s high speed rail project.

President Obama’s stimulus allocated $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, including, eventually, up to $3.5 billion for California’s project. However, according to the stimulus law, California must begin construction on the project before December 31, 2012 or they will not be eligible for any more high speed rail stimulus dollars. Obama’s Transportation Department reaffirmed this time limit last year when they admitted they had “no administrative authority to change this deadline.”

Fast forward to this June when the city of Chowchilla filed suit to stop construction of the project alleging that the High Speed Rail Authority failed to conduct a proper Environmental Impact Statement pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).

Studies show that the average time to complete the NEPA process is 6.1 years.

The governor and lawmakers provided only broad outlines of the cuts and few hard dollar figures, but Brown said the deal met his demand for permanent welfare reform and is enough that he now is willing to sign the main budget bill Democratic legislators sent him last week.

Even with the changes, the state's new spending plan still relies heavily on voters in November approving Brown's initiative to raise the state sales tax and increase the income tax on people who earn the most. If that ballot measure fails, automatic cuts would be triggered; among other things, public school years would be cut by as much as three weeks.

The one I’m referring to was made by California legislators on Sept. 10, 1999. They decided that investment gains would cover 100 percent of the cost of retroactive pension increases they granted that day to hundreds of thousands of state workers.
The politicians made the wrong bet — and the result has been a penalty to California’s budget that has averaged $2 billion a year ever since and that will cost the state billions more for decades to come.... More...

“He’s taking your vote for granted,” Romney said of Obama. “I’ve come here today with a simple message: You do have an alternative. Your vote should be respected.”

Romney was referring to Obama’s inaction on immigration even though Democrats were in the majority in the House and Senate when he became president.

Romney said Obama, because he cannot sell his economic policies that have left more Latinos (11% as opposed to 8%) unemployed than the general population, will simply tell Hispanics that “things could be worse” and “imply that you really don’t have an alternative.”

Romney’s remarks were eagerly anticipated in light of Obama’s announcement last Friday that his administration would take actions to not deport illegal immigrants under 30 years of age who came to the country as children and even give some work visas. Critics responded that Obama was circumventing the legislative process and the will of the American people by implementing immigration policy by fiat.

If he became president, Romney claimed, he would “put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the President's temporary measure,” but left out specifics. Romney did offer some specific measure he would take to strengthen legal immigration, such as reallocating Green Cards to those seeking to keep their families under one roof, exempting “from caps the spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents,” proverbially stapling a green card to immigrants who get advanced degrees, and allowing for a “a path to legal status for anyone who is willing to stand up and defend this great nation through military service.”

Now, with his presidency on the line and the polls looking dicey, President Obama's re-election campaign has become more openly divisive than ever.

He has embraced the strident "Occupy Wall Street" movement, with its ridiculous claim of representing the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Obama's Department of Justice has been spreading the hysteria that states requiring photo identification for voting are trying to keep minorities from voting, and using the prevention of voter fraud as a pretext....

The new program, initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and announced by President Obama, will bring nearly one million new people into the offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Meanwhile, a deferred action — whereby DHS decides at its discretion against deporting or prosecuting an individual — must be done for free for every new applicant.

Amid all of this, a continuing hiring freeze at all levels of the federal government means that USCIS won’t be allowed to hire any new employees to deal with the influx of new immigration cases.

Add to that President Obama’s decision to sidestep Congress, which leaves the program without specifically appropriated funds.

All of this, say critics, creates a program that is unworkable and will only lead to rationing of other services provided by USCIS.

The fundraising from Priorities has to be encouraging for Democrats who openly fretted about their ability to keep up with the well-funded conservative super PACs led by American Crossroads and Restore Our Future, which announced today it had raised $5 million in May.

American Crossroads raised $1.2 million in March and $1.8 million in April. The group has yet to release its May fundraising report.

What’s nearly certain to be the case, however, is that Crossroads’ cash on hand total will dwarf that of Priorities, which ended May with $4.5 million on hand. At the end of April, Crossroads had $25.5 million in the bank.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks." More at the link.

A Mexican attorney is preparing a civil lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fireams and Explosives over the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” criminal operation, the Mexican news magazine Proceso reported Tuesday. Diana Eugenia González Saldaña, “in coordination with [a legal] office in Houston, Texas, intends to take legal action…for the damage caused by the operation, whose failure has already been publicly acknowledged by the government of Barack Obama.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines to pass a resolution holding the attorney general in contempt for withholding documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious.

The vote went forward despite intervention by President Obama, who invoked executive privilege, which protects the Justice Department from handing over documents, even though a subpoena has been issued.

For Holder to be held in contempt, the full House of Representatives must approve the committee's resolution, which, according to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio., and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., the vote will take place next week.

"While we had hoped it would not come to this, unless the Attorney General reevaluates his choice and supplies the promised documents, the House will vote to hold him in contempt next week," the Republican leaders said in a statement. "If, however, Attorney General Holder produces these documents prior to the scheduled vote, we will give the Oversight Committee an opportunity to review in hopes of resolving this issue."

“Well, right there, I mean, he looked really de-energized,” responded Bruni. “I was watching him, you know, as he stepped to the podium. One of the whole advantages of being President, of being the incumbent, is you get those settings – the flags behind you, the podium. You get the international audience.”

“And he strode out there,” Bruni continued, “and the cadence of his speech was very slowed down. There was a lot of hemming and hawing. He got the first question from the press and answered, that answer went on and on and on, and he provided this really strange tutorial on European economic dynamics, and I just, I don’t think that’s what he went to do when he went to that microphone.”

Bruni put an exclamation point on this critique adding, “He doesn’t seem in command.”

“Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding ‘Fast and Furious’ were confined to the Department of Justice. The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation or the cover-up that followed,” said Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) spokesman, Michael Steel. “The Administration has always insisted that wasn’t the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?”

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead Wednesday morning with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway.

If the vote proceeds, Republicans have more than enough votes on committee to pass the resolution. However, Holder would not be considered held in contempt of Congress unless and until the full House approves the measure.

The move by Holder and Obama to lock down some requested documents only complicates the fight over the botched anti-gunrunning operation between the legislative and executive branches.

...And yes, this does give clear and unmistakable lie to the Holder spin that Fast and Furious was just a local, little nothing-burger contretemps out of Arizona that had nooooothing to do with DOJ and the executive branch. Executive privilege applies to communications in which the president, ahem, was directly involved....

In a letter to Obama seeking the assertion of executive privilege, Holder said the documents involved related to the Justice Department's "response to congressional oversight and related media inquiries," and that release of internal executive branch documents would have "significant, damaging consequences."

Holder also said releasing the documents would "inhibit the candor of executive branch deliberations in the future and significantly impair the ability of the executive branch to respond independently and effectively to congressional oversight."

Unfortunately, no one bothered to check the record while Obama was basing his persona and his candidacy on the myth of this multicultural romance. This includes Maraniss himself. In a botched 10,000-word Washington Post article published on the eve of the 2008 election, he chose to overlook the fact that Obama created a false narrative for the first two years of his life and then ran for president on that narrative.

An urgency ordinance that restricts protest activities at the Humboldt County Courthouse might be amended after the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to have staff look at alterations.

Currently, the urgency ordinance restricts protest activities between 9:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., prohibits people from erecting structures or securing items to county property, prohibits camping on the courthouse grounds, prohibits obstructing access or interfering with the passage of others and more. The ordinance was passed in March in response to complaints about the activities of the Occupy group in front of the courthouse....

During the afternoon session of the meeting, the board officially received Smith's resignation letter. Smith is resigning effective Aug. 3 so he can rest while undergoing treatments for lymphoma -- a type of cancer that attacks white blood cells called lymphocytes.

An emotional Smith read the resignation letter aloud, struggling to get through the first few sentences. Smith, who has served on the board for 12 years, sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking that supervisor-elect Rex Bohn take his place when he steps down. The governor is responsible for appointing someone to fill the vacant supervisorial seat.

The board expressed gratitude for Smith's leadership, guidance and knowledge. The supervisors voted unanimously to send a letter to the governor seconding Smith's request to appoint Bohn to the seat. Bohn and Smith's wife were in the audience to support Smith.

Smith said he'll be working closely with Bohn and the board to try to make the change as seamless as possible.

Rubio bats away speculation about whether Romney will choose him as the GOP vice presidential nominee this summer — "Look, it's flattering; it's also fleeting" — and says he hasn't thought about whether he might run for president down the road, though he doesn't dismiss the idea.

"I'm going to do the best job I can as a senator," he said in an interview in his family's compact, immaculately tidy home. "And if I do a good job at it, I'll probably have other opportunities. I don't know what those are today."

It is a curiosity of American politics that, while Latino voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, the highest-ranking Latino officeholders are just as likely to be Republican.

Mitt Romney told reporters in Michigan that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is being looked at as his possible running mate, adding that a news story out today about the Tea Party favorite not being vetted was "entirely false."

"Marco Rubio is being thoroughly vetted as part of our process," Romney said during a campaign stop in Holland, Michigan....

Rubio's name is frequently mentioned as a possible VP contender, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush is among those who have been touting the Tea Party favorite as a top pick. Rubio has been highlighted as someone to watch ever since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010.

The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney's rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about "the 99 percent," they chant about the Republican's greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of "concerned citizens."

They're also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed.

At the candidate's afternoon stop outside a bakery in DeWitt, a group of about 15 protesters stood behind a police barricade, a few of them chanting in support of Obama. Asked why he was protesting, a man dressed in a grim reaper costume pointed a reporter to a pair of "designated representatives" standing in the shade.

"I can't talk, you gotta get one of those people over there to talk to y'all," he said. "They're the ones who can talk to reporters."

Neither of the representatives agreed to give their names, but two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour.

Meanwhile, about 50 feet away, another protest had been organized by local Democrats in conjunction with the Obama campaign. A campaign official told BuzzFeed they had nothing to do with the other group — which he said he believed they had been sent by the labor-backed "Good Jobs Now" — and confirmed that they were being paid.

What viewers didn't see or hear was nearly three minutes of Romney discussing the nightmare of paperwork faced by an optometrist he'd talked to in trying to get the post office to change his address. He expressed mock amazement at Wawa's efficiency to underscore how the private sector often runs circles around the clumsy bureaucracy.

"We went to Wawas and it was instructive to me, because I saw the difference between the private sector and the governmental sector. People who work in government are good people and I respect what they do, but you see, the challenge with government is that it doesn’t have competition,” Romney said in a portion edited out of the segment.

A laugh track spliced in from another part of the speech allowed the left-leaning news network to further mock Romney....

Last August, Ed Schultz of MSNBC played an edited clip in which then-presidential candidate Rick Perry described the national debt as a “big black cloud that hangs over America” to make it sound like a racial dig at President Obama. Schultz later apologized.

And in March, NBC was caught editing the audio of George Zimmerman's 911 call as he watched Trayvon Martin in the minutes before he fatally shot the Florida teen. On a tape edited and played on the “Today” show, Zimmerman was heard calling Martin “suspicious” and volunteering that he was “black.” But the full, unedited tape showed that Zimmerman only mentioned Martin’s race when asked by the dispatcher. The result made it sound like Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin. The network fired three people after getting widespread criticism.

Like so many other Obama ploys, his immigration ploy is not meant to help the country, but to help Obama. This is all about getting the Hispanic vote this November.

The principle involved — keeping children from being hurt by actions over which they had no control — is one already advanced by Sen. Marco Rubio, who may well end up as Gov. Romney's vice-presidential running mate.

The Obama executive order, which suddenly popped up like a rabbit out of a magician's hat, steals some of Rubio's thunder, so it is clever politics. But clever politics is what has gotten this country into so much trouble, not only as regards immigration but also as regards the economy and the dangerous international situation.

This poll also takes into full account Obama's cynical move to violate the law with respect to our policy surrounding illegals. No bump here, Mr. President. Just more bad news....

People can complain about polling this early and say we have a long way to go, which is fair enough, but a small but steady lead over this amount of time is worth noting. What it mainly tells us is that Obama is stuck in the mid-forties, which is disastrous for an incumbent. The known quantity can't budge his numbers and unless the flailing Obama campaign can toxify Romney into something unelectable between now and November, Obama is going to lose.

Another reliable pollster, Gallup, is still using a registered voter screen, but has also showed Romney with a slight lead for a number of days until the two men tied things up yesterday.

While we political junkies live and breathe every twist and turn of the political daily grind, everyday American are too busy living their lives to pay attention right now. This is why there hasn't been much volatility in the polls, but there has been a trend.

The graph just below the Real Clear Politics poll of polls shows that since March 5, Obama's numbers against Mitt Romney have been on a noticeably downward trend, while Romney's numbers have -- through fits and starts -- trended up. This poll of polls shows Obama in the lead by less than a percentage point, again, an awful place for an incumbent to be at this point in the race.... More at the link....

A guest at the dinner had asked the mayor for his feelings about the two candidates, prompting a lengthy reply, which was overheard by other guests. Two of those guests spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared upsetting the mayor by discussing a private discussion; a third was a reporter for The New York Times.

...Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama are vying for the political support of Mr. Bloomberg, whose name is all but synonymous with corporate-style management, Wall Street clout and nonpartisan politics.

In continuing the dramatic shift from American constitutional democracy to rule by executive fiat that has marked his tenure, President Barack Obama now claims that the illegal aliens, to whom he purports to grant what effectively is amnesty, are “Americans … in every single way but one — on paper.” That is false. They are not Americans under the only thing that matters, the thing the Obama administration has chanted like a mantra — while riding roughshod over – since its very first day in power: the rule of law.

The Constitution and congressional statutes are written on parchment. That is the only relevance of “paper” in this equation — as the “hard copy” of our social contract and of the laws enacted pursuant to it. Under the Constitution, Congress, not the president, is endowed with such a power... Read the rest...

Legislative Democrats and Gov. Jerry Brown largely disagree over how to treat the state's welfare-to-work program, CalWORKs. The governor wants to remake CalWORKs by imposing harsher consequences for parents who do not find a job or seek training. Brown wants to reduce grants and cut off child care and other assistance for those parents.

Democrats believe those consequences are too severe in the midst of 10.8 percent unemployment. They instead want to save money by continuing to provide full cash aid to parents of young children without requiring them to work or seek training. The state saves money by not paying for their child care, transportation or education.

Steinberg said his goal is to strike a budget deal with Brown this week. Last year, Brown swiftly vetoed Democrats' first budget the morning after they passed it on the constitutional deadline, but he has let the latest budget bill simmer since Friday.

Brown has until Wednesday, June 27, to sign or veto the main budget legislation, Assembly Bill 1464.

...if it helps Obama stay in power, the media likes being lied to by Barack Obama, which is why he will never be held accountable or forced to pay a political price for the truths that have been uncovered over the past few months.

But the failed labor union recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was only a beginning. America needs a bunch more Scott Walkers, a whole lot more thoughtful, discerning voters – and we need California voters, in particular, to wake-up.

So California, meet Wisconsin. It’s the state where voters chose a Governor who, despite claims to the contrary, is neither “destroying workers’ rights” nor “killing democracy.” Governor Walker has brought government labor costs in-line with private sector labor costs, and in so doing is saving the state from fiscal collapse. Wisconsin chose wisely – and California, so can you.

I’m emphasizing “the voters” here because statesmen and women don’t operate in a vacuum. We, the people can affirm and encourage elected leaders to do the right thing, or we can encourage our leaders to be reckless and self-serving. In November of 2010 Californians rejected a candidate for Governor who pledged to do much of what Scott Walker has done, and instead elected a Governor who is bought and paid for by labor unions.

The fact that California Governor Jerry Brown has recently succumbed to telling the media “no, we’re not like Greece” should be a serious warning sign. Yet California’s plight could likely be different, had voters there been more like voters in Wisconsin....

What I call "Securitygate" -- the Obama administration's release of covert details of the war on terror -- is far more serious than either Watergate or Iran-Contra.

Here is the crux of the scandal: Obama is formulating a new policy of avoiding overt unpopular engagements, while waging an unprecedented covert war across the world. He’s afraid that the American people do not fully appreciate these once-secret efforts and might in 2012 look only at his mishaps in Afghanistan or his public confusion over Islamic terror. Ergo, feed information to a Sanger or Ignatius so that they can skillfully inform us, albeit with a bit of dramatic “shock” and “surprise,” just how tough, brutal, and deadly Barack Obama really is....

Reader, forget politics. Just digest the nature, theme, the timing, and the damage of these disclosures. Do that and most of you will conclude they are offenses to the security of the United States — or, in the words of Barack Obama on another matter, “unpatriotic.”

The Obama administration is leaking sensitive information to bolster the president’s national security credentials and portray him as a hands-on commander in chief in preparation for the November presidential election. These leaks damage our security, the culprits ought to go to jail, and Congress must quickly stop the hemorrhaging.

Leaders on Capitol Hill are rightly alarmed. “The recent disclosures of sensitive information constitute damaging breaches of U.S. national security,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “We must demand assurances from the attorney general that the Department of Justice prosecutors are empowered to conduct a complete, impartial, and fair investigation....”

Legally, President Obama has reiterated the principle that he can pick and choose which U.S. laws he wishes to enforce (see his decision to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, his decision not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and his administration’s contempt for national-security confidentiality and Senate and House subpoenas to the attorney general). If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended or repealed through proper legislative or judicial action — then what can he not do? Obama is turning out to be the most subversive chief executive in terms of eroding U.S. law since Richard Nixon.

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“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” .....Robert A. Heinlein quotes (American science-fiction Writer, 1907-1988)